Critics predicted the movie is “destined to provoke controversy” for casting a caucasian as an African-American for the first time since the ’50s.

TORONTO – Audiences lapped up Anthony Hopkins like so much chianti as Hannibal “the Cannibal” Lecter in three hit movies.

But the Welsh Oscar-winner admits it may be harder to swallow him as light-skinned African-American in the hugely controversial “The Human Stain.”

“It’s a very politically incorrect thing to do, and I love political incorrectness,” he said with a chuckle before the film, which co-stars Nicole Kidman, made its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival over the weekend.

Adapted from an award-winning novel by Philip Roth that’s set against the background of the Clinton sex scandal, the movie (opening Sept. 26 in New York) revels in political incorrectness and oddball casting.

Hopkins’ character Coleman Silk, a longtime classics professor at a New England college, gives up his position after making a remark that is falsely construed as racist.

When the newly widowed Silk falls into a May-December romance with an abused and illiterate cleaning lady who has a dark history of her own – played by the elegant Kidman, who some early reviewers have remarked is equally unlikely in the part.

The relationship, and a blooming friendship with a younger male novelist – Gary Sinese, another unlikely choice, playing Roth’s alter ego Nathan Zuckerman – unleashes in Silk a flood of memories about how he long ago disowned his black family to live more freely by passing as a white Jew.

“Why did they cast me?” said the barrel-chested 65-year-old Hopkins. “It’s not very likely, but I decided to honor their confidence in me. There are lots of African-Americans with very light skin.”

But it’s not clear whether the actor, who has a reputation for putting on interviewers, is kidding when he claims to be distantly descended from Moroccans, or that he wore “very light olive makeup to change the pigment of my skin.”

He did mimic the vocal mannerisms of Wentworth Miller, the talented newcomer who plays Coleman Silk as a young man in flashbacks.

“I don’t have a problem with Hopkins being cast,” said the very light-skinned Miller, whose father is black and mother is white.

“You need a white actor in the role or there’s no drama when it’s revealed that Silk is really black.”

Still, the trade paper Variety predicted the movie is “destined to provoke controversy” for casting a caucasian as an African-American for the first time since the ’50s, when stars like Jeanne Crain and Mel Ferrer played light-skinned blacks who passed as white.

Kidman, for her part, says she doesn’t know – or care – whether audiences will accept sex scenes involving her and an actor who’s nearly twice her age.

“Are people going to go and see Nicole Kidman and Anthony Hopkins kiss on the screen?” asks the Saucy Aussie. “It doesn’t enter into the equation for me. I’m very proud to be putting different kinds of relationships on the screen.”

The unlikely romantic duo of Hopkins and Kidman was the idea of producer Tom Rosenberg, and was seconded by Oscar-winning director Robert Benton (“Kramer vs. Kramer”).

Anna Deavere Smith, who plays Silk’s mother, has the most powerful scene in the movie, when she accuses the young man of “murdering” the family by passing as white and denying his heritage.

“Passing is not so much an issue today, but the same thing is happening today with black people who look black but don’t feel a responsibility to the community,” said the “West Wing” star.

Smith, who has played people of different ethnicity and even sexes in her acclaimed stage performances, also defends the casting of Hopkins.

“In his generation, there aren’t many light-skinned black actors that you could choose for a part as demanding as this,” she said.

“But years from now, when Wentworth Miller is his age, I hope there will be many more casting options available.”